Monday, June 27, 2005

The downtrodden: Conservative filmakers

"Five years from now, all I hope is that filmmakers to the right have the same access to distribution that Michael Moore has," said Mr. Maloney, the maker of "Brainwashing 101."

If established Hollywood conservatives welcome the energy of this new group, some nonetheless fear that it is heading down the wrong path. "This is the cult of victimization, which says, 'The left has ganged up on us in the media, so we're going to fight back with film festivals for conservatives and screenwriting courses for Christians,' " said Mr. Chetwynd, who directed the agitprop documentary "Celsius 41.11." "I don't support that approach at all, because what you'll end up with is ideologues with laptops."

Even the outspoken Mr. Bannon thinks that little will be gained if conservative ideology moves too far in front of conservative art. "We have the money, we have the ideas," he said. "What we don't have - and what the left has in spades - are great filmmakers."

For all of this time, I've had the belief that the bulk of what slips out of the Hollywood lower alimentary, dropping into the porcelain bowl of the marketplace, is conservative crap (same goes for television).